Ground yourself

I'm currently going through lots of somatic exercises to establish a few concepts in the mind that will prove useful later on (namely: mindfulness, dispassion, calm, tranquility, investigation, impermanence, self awareness and joy). These seeds will grow slowly until they flesh out your awareness of your enitre human experience - this is quite helpful in becoming a delightful person (well, in your own mind anyway).

This technique is called grounding and useful bridge between your actual mind and the ideas the mind creates - keep an eye out for that.

Grounding is a very good way of diverting attention out of your self centered thoughts into a more neutral place. This gives us a breathing space from the seemingly endless nonsense that goes through our everyday mind - usually a combination of me, me, me thinking and how to avoid unpleasantness.

Anyway, grounding is a fairly easy concept to grasp. We place our attention in our feet and we imagine ourselves breathing down into the feet and back out again. Once we get good at this, then we can move the attention into our hands or legs, and finally into the rising and falling of our bellies. It is important to avoid the heart and mind area as this will lead you back into your familiar thought patterns or older, more deep seated mental knots. If you want to be guided through this process then look for a guided bodyscan meditation - I have one on my blog.

The next step is to feel the physical contact of your body with the seat or floor. Feel the contact points and notice how your body has substance that is pressing against another subtance. (In Buddhism, this is contemplating the earth element). Dwell in your physicality, feel the matter in your body.

I will explore the four elements in more detail later on - or you can jump right in by looking it up yourself. Don't dismiss it as alchemical nonsense - that is not the point.

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